Calling

Lenten Practice: FastingDaily Act: When we move toward lives of simplicity, we use less of the Earth’s precious resources as well. Today, choose to conserve in a way that will be a blessing to creation. Decrease or eliminate your use of electricity, water, or fuel for one day. Repeat this week’s prayer phrase throughout your day.Weekly Prayer Phrase: Repeat this phrase slowly as you breathe deeply. You may choose to memorize this phrase and repeat it throughout your day.

“OPEN ME TO RECEIVE MORE OF YOU.”

By Katie Harmon-McLaughlin

One of my first revelatory moments of recognizing the incarnate God came in the mundane choice to recycle. I held the plastic bottle in my hands and faced the temptation of convenience. While the trash bin was right beside me, the recycle bin was across the room and around the corner.

A phrase from my eco-theology class drifted into my consciousness, “The whole world is the body of God.” (Sallie McFague)

If the whole earth is sacred, then earth care is also prayer.
Each act of earth care is healing, co-creation, relationship.

I chose to walk to the recycle bin, each step prayerful. I held the bottle above the bin with a ceremonial slowness and released it with a full-hearted intention. It is difficult to explain the peace and purpose that can come from living in a way that recognizes and honors our inherent interconnectedness with all life. That this is biological andspiritual evokes awe in me, and abounding gratitude.

Today our act of emptying is linked to a prayerful act of earth healing. In Red, Terry Tempest Williams suggests, “We have forgotten the option of restraint.” We have become so accustomed to convenience that the option of intentionally restraining seems almost foolish. Why would I choose to sit in the dark one night when I can turn on the light? Why would I choose to walk somewhere when I can drive? It is countercultural to imagine that restraint from what is readily accessible could be a form of prayer.

And consider this: What gift could a night in the dark bring? If you unplugged for an evening, what might be yearning to emerge within you that is currently being drowned out by the constant murmur of the television? If you chose to walk instead of drive, what might you notice along the way? What new neighbor might you meet? What new insight might a few moments of fresh air bring?

Lent is a call to Christian simplicity. We enter this time to remove every distraction from fullest life in God… every distraction.

Terry Tempest Williams describes her choice to move to the desert as seeking the moreof life in a deliberate emptiness. “We wanted more. We wanted less. We wanted more time, fewer distractions. We wanted more time together, time to write, to breathe, to be more conscious with our lives. We wanted to be closer to wild places where we could walk and witness the seasonal changes, even the changing constellations… In the vastness of the desert, I want to create my days as a ceremony around s l o w n e s s ….”

While many of us can’t just move to the desert, we can begin to see more clearly the link between our spiritual health and the health of the planet we call home.

How might the more we are seeking be living within the invitation of less?

REMINDER: March 1, 2015 is the registration deadline for our upcoming Lenten Retreat with Presiding Evangelist, David Brock. The theme is INTO THE WILDERNESS (March 13-15). If you are seeking a deeper exploration of the season of Lent in your life and yearn to grow closer with God, we would love to share this experience with you! Email khmclaughlin@cofchrist.org if you have any questions.

Lenten Practice:FastingDaily Act: Engage in an act of generosity today. Buy someone a cup of coffee, send a note or gift to someone you think could use it, or make time in your day to spend with someone who could use your gift of time and presence. Dwell in the experience of self-emptying for the sake of another.Weekly Prayer Phrase: Repeat this phrase slowly as you breathe deeply. You may choose to memorize this phrase and repeat it throughout your day.

“OPEN ME TO RECEIVE MORE OF YOU.”

By Katie Harmon-McLaughlin

The closer I grow to Christ
The more I feel
A radical love
On fire within me
Aching for release

How do I explain?
It is wholeness
It is salvation
It is justice

It is fulfillmentAnd emptying

What might happen
If I let this radical love
Lose on the world?

Where might it lead?
What might if ask of me?
How might it change me?

The more I get to know
The One I claim to follow
The more I see how
My wholeness is linked
With the well-being of all
The more I see how
The deepest dream within me
Is Shalom

Maybe this is what Lent is for
Attention to this radical love
Which is
Christ alive deep within you
With a heart on fire for
Something new

I am beginning to understand
In that space beyond words
What it means
That I must lose my life
To find it

REMINDER: March 1, 2015 is the registration deadline for our upcoming Lenten Retreat with Presiding Evangelist, David Brock. The theme is INTO THE WILDERNESS (March 13-15). If you are seeking a deeper exploration of the season of Lent in your life and yearn to grow closer with God, we would love to share this experience with you! Email khmclaughlin@cofchrist.org if you have any questions.

Who: This event is for anyone interested in young adult leadership or young adult ministries within the Community of Christ church (you do not have to hold a specific leadership role or be a certain age to attend (but 18+ please).

When and Where: March 6-8, 2015 at Bluewater Community of Christ Campgroundsin Lexington, MI (Flint, MI or Sarnia, ON are the nearest airports). Event will start approximately 6pm on Friday and end before noon on Sunday.

Cost: $45.00 We want this to be affordable, so the registration cost will cover food and accommodation. We encourage you to travel with friends to limit transportation costs to the campgrounds!

LEAD. Develop your skills and learn new ones. Receive valuable tools and resources that will help you be a better leader.

SERVE. Transfer skills to your local area. Find out how you can use these tools to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Deepen your spiritual connections and discern the ways your community needs you!

CONNECT. Build a community of supportive leaders working towards a common goal! Network, share ideas, build relationships that are intentional, meaningful, and helpful to you in your ministry with young adults!

This is a rare opportunity and has unlimited benefits to you and your communities – so don’t miss out!

We encourage interested participants to partner with their congregations and Mission Centres. Talk to your leadership about your interest in attending, seek financial support, and offer to bring back what you’ve learned to your local area. The outcomes of this event are only as beneficial as the people you share them with! If you need help connecting with your local leadership, try these sources or contact us at yaministries@cofchrist.org:

LEAD. Develop your skills and learn new ones. Receive valuable tools and resources that will help you be a better leader.

SERVE. Transfer skills to your local area. Find out how you can use these tools to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Deepen your spiritual connections and discern the ways your community needs you!

CONNECT. Build a community of supportive leaders working towards a common goal! Network, share ideas, build relationships that are intentional, meaningful, and helpful to you in your ministry with young adults!

This is a rare opportunity and has unlimited benefits to you and your communities – so don’t miss out!

We encourage interested participants to partner with their congregations and Mission Centres. Talk to your leadership about your interest in attending, seek financial support, and offer to bring back what you’ve learned to your local area. The outcomes of this event are only as beneficial as the people you share them with! If you need help connecting with your local leadership, try these sources or contact us at yaministries@cofchrist.org:

Who: This event is for anyone interested in young adult leadership or young adult ministries within the Community of Christ church (you do not have to hold a specific leadership role to attend).

When and Where: March 6-8, 2015 at Bluewater Community of Christ Campgroundsin Lexington, MI (Flint, MI or Sarnia, ON are the nearest airports). Event will start approximately 6pm on Friday and end before noon on Sunday.

Cost: $45.00 We want this to be affordable, so the registration cost will cover food and accommodation. We encourage you to travel with friends to limit transportation costs to the campgrounds!

Are you looking for an experience that will challenge you and transform you? World Service Corps may be the experience you are looking for! World Service Corps (WSC) is an international volunteer ministry of Community of Christ, committed to offering opportunities for leadership development, disciple formation, and cultural immersion.

Applications are being accepted now until January 31, 2015 to serve as a World Service Corps volunteer in 2015. Apply today! Visit our website to view more information or contact the WSC Coordinator if you have any questions.

What is it like to be a World Service Corps volunteer? Every volunteer experience is different. But read this story from Lawson Mushibwe to find out his perspective! Lawson is from Zambia and he served as a WSC volunteer in India for two months in 2014.

Phone rings…
Me: Hello…
Emily: Hello… Is this Lawson Mushibwe?
Me: Yes it is.
Emily: How are you Lawson?
Me: Thinking to myself, OMG, that’s an American accent… But I calmly in my polished accent responded, “Am fine thank you, and how are you?”
Emily: This is Emily Penrose McLaughlin calling you from Community of Christ. I am the World Service Corps Program Coordinator.

From this moment I knew that my WSC volunteer application had been considered. And not too long from that call, I was taking part in sharing the five mission initiatives, promoting communities of joy, hope, love and peace as well as proclaiming Jesus Christ as he is the centre of it all. I was also privileged to share at a prayer meeting on one of the eight sacraments (marriage) of Community of Christ to a couple on their fourteenth marriage anniversary.
It didn’t take me long to adapt to this new environment. Quickly, I had a family and in no time I developed new strong chords of love in friendship which created an atmosphere resulting in feelings I would get if I were home, so I indeed felt at home. Even though there was a bit of language barrier, I opened my ears to listen to people’s stories and testimonies which indeed strengthened my faith and changed my life.

Sunday school classes with the kids were exceptionally awesome. I had a good time with the Tamil children, very clever and intelligent children. Classes were never boring as they were actively involved and very participative. They portrayed the eagerness to learn more on the Bible, and indeed the bible stories. And so, on one Sunday, the kids were granted a chance to share in the Church service through a drama on one of the lessons they learnt about the Good Samaritan. Equally, the children from the local school where we volunteered were participative and intelligent. Their syllabus is quiet advanced as compared to my country therefore; I picked the lower grades/standards to save me some embarrassment [Hahaha].

As much as I was thoroughly prepared and ready for this tasked mission, what I found was humbling and made me to reduce myself to nearly nothing, giving up myself for service and striping off my right to be right on how I understand things. And yeah, sacrifice is the word to describe this humbling change I had to undergo. This was in regards to cultural differences and culture shock. Of course, each cultural practice with its own followings. Therefore, I chose to envision the emerging differences and diversity not as sources of conflict/division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration. And this provided a platform for me to share, experience and appreciate one of the Community of Christ Enduring Principles, Unity in Diversity. This resulted in my realization that although our societies may have differences; we are still highly connected through Jesus Christ.

All in all, for many people, sixty days of ministry would really be one day of ministry repeated sixty times differently. So was my WSC volunteer experience. Each day came with its own serendipitous experiences that will forever remain in my heart as it has impacted and enriched my life in this regard.

This word has meant different things to me over the course of my life thus far. It once brought to mind the image of an all-powerful God who was moving pieces of my life around like a life-sized game of muggle-chess (yes, that is a Harry Potter reference). I used to believe blessings came from God and you were lucky if He chose to bless you. I no longer see it that way.

As I got older, theological questions began to cloud my once clear picture and understanding of God. Why would God choose to bless me and NOT bless others? If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all loving, how can extremely terrible things like natural disasters or genocide happen? Was God too busy “blessing” little ole me to do anything about those BIG issues. These questions and more plagued my heart and soul as I struggled to make sense of it all.

For a while, I wondered if I didn’t even believe in God, as least not in the same “God” I had before. I knew I believed in something; some collective, creative, connective power, but was that God if God meant all the images I had been taught for so long? I never felt comfortable saying I didn’t believe, because that wasn’t completely true, but I also couldn’t claim the concepts I once knew and stood by. I remember thinking that old saying “ignorance is bliss,” has so much truth in it. I wanted, on some level, to go back to my old ways of thinking. It was so much easier to just believe that God was in control, that God had a plan for my life. If only I could take away the questions I wrestled with, the doubts that drowned me in darkness.

But I couldn’t go back.

I had been changed – by untimely deaths of friends and loved ones, by injustice that existed and still exists, by pain, by the cruelty in the world. I’d been forced to think – by hard academics/religious classes at Graceland (my alma mater), by friends going through similar faith crisis, by the questions that wouldn’t go away and shattered my pretty-ordered-God-in-a-box-world.

Even today, I’m not sure where exactly things changed. There was never a moment of clarity or insight, just a slow steady crawl to new understanding. There are truths I feel and recognize in my deepest soul; there is something more, there is some connecting spirit, we are many but we are one. Slowly, I began to claim God again. Not the same God as before, but I choose to still use the word “God” because I have no other word for “it.”

I believe in hope. I believe in love. I believe in the power we have to love and affect those around us. I believe our thoughts and intentions are far more powerful than we have any idea about. I believe the universe is a connected web of intentions, and relationships, and feelings rather like the neurons in our brains. I believe that connective force that can transcend time and distance is what we have poorly understood as God, so we thought God should be more like us – human, white, male, and petty, choosing to bless some and not others.

The word blessing now means something very different to me as well. Blessing is an active tapping into that loving, wise energy. Blessing is about rooting oneself into that force and allowing one’s heart to expand. It can be felt by individuals or groups, in times of sorrow, in times of joy. Being blessed isn’t a passive state where God plays games with your life. Blessing is listening to the callings and promptings, listening to the wisdom that exists in the lives all around us. Blessings invoke ancient power within our own lives and souls, connecting us to each other and the Earth.

I now believe that blessings are far more about love.

This past Sunday was the last time Andrew and I would be with our local congregation for a few years. On that day, we gathered with our friends and family to receive a blessing for our Peace Corps service. It was an opportunity and invitation to accept love and support from our community. It was an invitation to go deeper and to prepare emotionally to embrace the challenges and blessings our Peace Corps service has to offer. It was incredible to feel such hope and such love. Not many young adults participate in organized religion in the Portland area, but we feel the intergenerational relationships we have made the past 4 years, sharing with that community, have changed our lives for the better. We have their stories, their lessons, their support.

Regardless if you are Christian or not, or participate in any religion at all, it is my sincere hope that at some point in your life you feel the level of support Andrew and I felt last Sunday for transitioning to this new stage of life. While it is difficult to say goodbye to people who have become our friends and extended family, we will carry their blessings forward. Thank you, Tuality Community of Christ for being companions on our journey.

May we be open to the blessings today that our loved ones helped us find and feel. May we listen with open hearts to the callings and promptings around us. May we feel the love and support from this past Sunday so strongly that it can help sustain us and support us through our Peace Corps service. May we be blessed.

Since finishing my formal studies in 2010, I’ve been on a journey. First, I moved from Chicago to Graceland University, Lamoni, IA, to be the Director of Religious Life and campus minister in 2011. I’ve spent the last three years settling into this position: learning Graceland’s current institutional culture, getting to know the students who come to GU, developing the courses I’m teaching, and finding my alchemical vision for Christ’s mission and Community of Christ’s mission on campus. These responsibilities, and other denominational activities, have thoroughly absorbed the last three years of my life.

Beginning my fourth year, I can’t say “I’ve arrived.” I’m still navigating these areas and learning things. But, I’ve come to a place where I have my bearings and some sense of direction. I’ve identified areas that I think need long-term attention and collaboration. I better know my circle of influence verses my circle of control. I find meaning in daily life among students and colleagues at Graceland. I also have more opportunities to be present with Margo and my two daughters at home. Katy, my oldest, is a teenager this year. She’ll be a freshmen in high school a year from now. Kenzlee, my younger daughter, began middle-school this year. Both are in sports and playing two instruments. My best friend and wife, Margo, loves her faculty position in the Gleazer School of Education at Graceland, and has been working on an Ed.D. year-round for three years from Drake University. Currently, she is writing on her dissertation. Journeying to this point has been exhausting, but meaningful. Yet, as I consider the future and try to navigate work and family, I have a dull nagging feeling within me, like a still small voice trying to speak or the distracting feeling of cool drips of water landing on the back of my neck.

I think living a whole spiritual life means we respond to the s/Spirit within us that yearns to give birth to something. I call it “s/Spirit” because it is a fountain of life-giving and life-bearing energy in which God’s Life and Creativity entwine indistinguishably with our own lives and creativity. There is a summons to live a life of freedom and creativity. That s/Spirit is that creative energy or vision, impulsive inspiration, and quietude of potential that haunts our working mind and resting moments.

However, I’m not being prescriptive. We’ve heard enough from the spiritual marketplace and self-help culture about how much we need to express ourselves freely, connect with our inner-child, play and live creatively. We’re too busy, paying attention to the wrong things. Blah, blah, blah…..

OK. Fine. Maybe.

Spirituality becomes another thing to do. <sigh>

And, when I stop and pay attention to that “dull nagging” desire in me, I don’t miss the obvious. I don’t miss the fact that my family and daughters are, quite literally, part of this “birthing” in my life. They are part of my life’s work. They draw on and call forth my disciplined and creative energies. Miraculously, Katy and Kenzlee are forming into generous, crazy, obstinate, and surprising young persons right before me every day.

I also don’t mean that my work at Graceland isn’t creative. It, too, takes creative energies and inspiration. It, too, gives life.

But, apparently, there is something more or missing. The dull nagging or spiritual drip that’s thudding on my neck as I hunch over focused on “today’s tasks” keeps coming. It doesn’t frustrate me or give me angst. I think I just need to listen to that small voice and pay attention to that refreshing drip pool on me. To disregard this nagging anxiously in the name of busyness, or to appease some insatiable need for productivity, only keeps my life locked in a cycle of deadlines and want for mindless entertainment. So draining. Still, “deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls,” Psalm 42: 7 says, “all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.”